1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to vehicles and, in particular, to ground vehicles. Still more particularly, the present disclosure relates to unmanned ground vehicles for performing missions.
2. Background
In performing surveillance and obtaining information about geographic areas, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been used in various locations. An unmanned aerial vehicle is capable of travelling over large areas. These types of vehicles are capable of obtaining information about the locations of vehicles, troops, bridges, roads, and/or other types of information.
Unmanned aerial vehicles, however, are restricted in their usefulness by the amount of time that can be spent flying over target areas. The duration of flight for a vehicle is currently up to about 40 hours. As a result, an unmanned aerial vehicle returns to base to refuel before continuing a mission or performing another mission.
As a result, the monitoring of the target area is not continuous with only a single unmanned aerial vehicle. A second unmanned aerial vehicle may be used to monitor the area, while the first unmanned aerial vehicle refuels. Additionally, additional unmanned aerial vehicles may be needed in case maintenance operations need to be performed. As a result, a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles is needed to work in a relay fashion to maintain a constant presence to monitor a given target area.
This type of monitoring provides the desired information about target areas. However, the cost of this type of monitoring is often higher than desirable. For example, each unmanned aerial vehicle has a cost and requires a number of operators to provide constant monitoring of a target area. Also, logistics for launching, controlling, and recovering unmanned aerial vehicles also increases the complexity of maintaining constant monitoring of the target area. Further, unmanned aerial vehicles may be detected and may forewarn a target of their presence or may become a target of enemy fire.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have a method and apparatus that takes into account at least one of the issues discussed above, as well as possibly other issues.